But it's the environment that makes it impossible for people to truly live with one another! You cannot walk anywhere because there are no sidewalks. You cannot meet your neighbors because there are no public spaces. Everyone is stuck in traffic, alone in their cars, or packed into a bus (I guess that's one place where you could socialize with others, but it's not very comfortable).
I apologize if I protested too much. I've seen a lot of US and THEM talk, ever since he was elected but especially in the past weeks. Yes, suburban life can be "alienating," but I think you're generalizing way too much. I grew up in North York and liked my neighbourhood. I also liked going downtown which wasn't some weird, foreign world; I still do. I went to U of T and took transit every day. I met people, at school and played in the street and schoolyards with my friends. Not only did I meet my neighbours, they weren't all white nuclear families but Indian and Chinese and Israeli and Italian. We didn't have a public space like Trinity Bellwoods but we had the local plaza and the local school and the ravine and all sorts of other places.
People may be packed onto buses (though it seems paradoxical to suggest that's alienating) but the King Streetcar is plenty packed too and yet no one questions how people in Liberty Village choose to live or why they live there.
In short, you're describing your vision of "what a suburb is," but it's not the suburb I grew up in. I think people who grew up elsewhere have an image of what that it is; and that cuts both ways. There are downtowners who don't get "suburbia" and vice versa. But, in my opinion, it's when you fail to understand "them," when you talk about how "they" have subways and "we" don't or you talk about how "they" voted for Ford and "we' didn't (as Chris Hume did in the Star the other day), or talk about how "we" need to decentralize because we can't co-exist with "them" (at least politically), you are just perpetuating the same fault lines Ford exploited.
Perhaps my suburban upbringing was the exception, though I think most of the people I grew up with feel much the same way. I'm surprised at the depth of the rifts being exposed...they were there during the Miller years, I suppose, but Ford has really torn the band-aid off and exposed the wound. It's ugly to see and while I understand you were perhaps trying more to understand it than to aggravate it, I think that's the ultimate effect when you generalize about an entire population and/or lifestyle.